In the autumn of 2008 the National Gallery of Denmark staged an exhibition focusing on the Flemish Baroque painter Jacob Jordaens’ (1593-1678) monumental painting The Tribute Money. Peter finding the Silver Coin in the Mouth of the Fish, also called The Ferry Boat to Antwerp.

The exhibition, which was staged in co-operation with the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, celebrated the completion of a restoration project that began on 18 September 2007 in an open workshop installed in one of the Gallery’s exhibition rooms.

Now, that exhibition constitutes yet another branch on the gnarly tree that is the colourful history of the painting’s reception.

Michelangelo Bounarotti: The Dying Slave (copy), 1514-1516

Henrik Holm: Plaster Bodies as Performance. The Royal Collection of Casts viewed from a performative perspective.

Some of the basic premises for the study of performativity will be described in this article and applied to the Royal Cast Collection.

The objective is not simply to consider theory for theory’s sake, but to contribute to a new understanding of the collection’s history and significance. What is more, this perspective makes it possible to outline a future scenario for cast collections in general.

Miriam Have Watts: Individual and Type? L.A. Ring’s Harvest and The Sower.

Laurits Andersen Ring’s (1854-1933) paintings Harvest from 1885 and The Sower from 1910 will serve as the point of departure for the following examination of a small, focused selection of Ring’s production. In the text I shall home in on the two works’ distinctive description of fundamental issues regarding the human being as body and as consciousness in the world.

Rasmus Kjærboe: The Style in Itself . The classical, the modern, and Modern Classicism in three breakthrough sculptures by Svend Rathsack, Johannes C. Bjerg, and Einar Utzon-Frank.

The years 1914 to 1915 brought remarkable simultaneous breakthroughs for three Danish sculptors and their take on a contemporary sculpture intended to show a new way of engaging artistically with tradition.

Svend Rathsack’s Adam, Newly Created (1913-14), Johannes C. Bjerg’s Abyssinian (1914), and Einar Utzon-Franks Aphrodite (1914) are life-sized statues; simply by virtue of the resources committed to their execution they can be described as deliberately ambitious ventures into forming the earliest Danish example of what was once a both popular and widespread international classicism.

In the years that followed the three artists created a number of works in the new style; works that were regarded as being amongst the finest and most important endeavours Danish art had to offer during the artists’ own lifetimes, but which are now virtually unknown by art historians and laymen alike.

In 2009 the painting Le Luxe II by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was restored at the National Gallery of Denmark’s Department of Conservation.

During treatment, a number of studies were conducted in order to achieve greater knowledge about the painting’s genesis and to expand our general knowledge of Matisse’s painting technique. One particular objective was to ascertain how the artist transferred the motif to the canvas. Another was to determine the medium used to execute Le Luxe II, as existing information pointed in different directions.

The extensive studies prompted collaboration between the Gallery and protein scientists from the Department.

The Danish draughtsman and graphic artist Palle Nielsen (1920-2000) may be the single greatest interpreter of the urban landscape within Danish art.

At the same time he is one of the most important interpreters of ruins. In Nielsen’s work, lying in ruins appears to be a permanent state applying to the modern city: façades are crumbling, the houses are abandoned, the city stands before a fall.

The question is: what meaning and significance is associated with such urban decay? The studies conducted over the last 20 years have predominantly viewed the decay in the light of Nielsen’s biographical details and his era, e.g. his experiences in connection with World War II or the Cold War.

It can, however, be argued that there cannot be simply one, ultimate biographical or historical explanation behind the decay expressed in Nielsen’s work. Quite the contrary: the significance of urban decay is given many different forms in the various series. Consequently, this essay will aim to shed light on a particular Nielsen series: the one entitled The Abandoned City (1973-1976).